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September 23, 2012

A Most Excellent Map Of Employee Shuttle Bus Stops

No routes have been published of employee shuttle bus stops, but Realtors seem to know where they are - they're a huge bonus for selling or renting property in Noe Valley and other neighborhoods to those commuting to Silicon Valley. Neighbors have loved/hated them since around 2008. The City conducted a study concluding there's money to be made in regulation. But no one has quantified what everyone wants to know - how many people ride them and do they do more harm than good?

Data visualization experts at Stamen Design were commissioned by Zero1 to study how many people make the commute from San Francisco to the Silicon Valley, urban to suburban. It was a long process, and the above map was created. The nut? Besides the really cool graphic? "At a rough estimate, these shuttles transport about 40% of the amount of passengers Caltrain moves each day. Google alone runs about 125 trips daily, all over the city."

I think this is an "artists rendering"; there's nothing accurate about it.

And the Corporate Gods that use the shuttles to cart their minions to work day in and day out are STILL not paying ANY taxes or fees to The City. And The City, fawning over the Corporate Gods, is going to do yet another study just so they can delay any possible decision for as long as possible. And so it continues that there are no guidelines, no rules, no City revenues, and no oversight for the shuttles.

There is a Google bus map out there and this one mostly jive with that one. Except 1) it shows a stop in Bayview's Executive Park in the other map and this one doesn't 2) The other map doesn't show stops on Potrero Ave and this one does.

I agree that the companies that operate these private shuttles should pay something to SF for using our roads, tying up our traffic by making turns onto roads which clearly were not made for such large vehicles. Also, just from an environmental perspective, does it really make sense to have these buses, instead of just having an office in SF?